Category: Heart disease and mental health issues

– posts here focus on the often overlooked emotional impact of having a cardiac event

Do you think you’re a “somebody”?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 23 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

I'm the little blonde standing up...
I’m the little blonde with the funny haircut

When I was a little girl in the 1950s, my parents were stingy with praise and magnanimous with criticism. To be otherwise would result in a child developing a “swelled head”, which, as all parents knew back then, would be the worst possible thing that could ever happen to any child.

“She really thinks she’s a SOMEBODY!” was a phrase delivered with withering contempt by my mother in describing any person whose sense of self-esteem seemed even remotely healthy.

Continue reading “Do you think you’re a “somebody”?” →

When a serious diagnosis makes you feel mad as hell

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 31 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Since returning from my 2008 WomenHeart Science & Leadership training at Mayo Clinic, I’ve spent a lot of time meeting, listening to, speaking with, writing for and hearing from countless other heart patients.  Once the dust settles immediately following a cardiac diagnosis – that time my heart sister Jodi Jackson engagingly calls “post-heart attack stun“ – I’ve observed that a recurring theme among so many of the freshly-diagnosed is a sense of anger at what has just hit them.

Here’s a fairly typical example.

A woman I met recently had spent decades making good health an important priority in her life, and then – WHAM! – a heart attack, out of the blue.  Her subsequent anger is hardly surprising: “How could this have happened to ME, of all people? I’ve been doing everything right!  I never saw this coming!  And now you’re telling me that I’m stuck with this chronic and progressive medical condition for the rest of my life?!?”    Continue reading “When a serious diagnosis makes you feel mad as hell” →

The loss of ‘self’ in chronic illness is what really hurts

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 36 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

People living with chronic illness already know that the triple whammy of ongoing physical symptoms, psychological distress and the discomfort of medical procedures can cause us to suffer. But when California sociologist Dr. Kathy Charmaz studied chronic illness, she identified an element of suffering that is often dismissed by health care providers.(1)

As she explained in research published in the journal Sociology of Health & Illness, a narrow medicalized view of suffering that’s defined as physical symptoms only ignores or minimizes the broader significance of suffering in a way that may resonate with you if you too live with a chronic illness like heart disease: Continue reading “The loss of ‘self’ in chronic illness is what really hurts” →

Little social support: a big gap for younger heart patients

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 19 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

I used to offer to sell to my non-Ukrainian friends the guest list from our big Ukrainian wedding. Imagine 450 names, all of whom were raised in a wonderful Slavic culture that knows what to do when hard times strike. No sooner do they hear of a friend or neighbour’s problems (like a family tragedy or a serious health crisis) – and they start pitching in to help. Such support often starts with baking, cooking and getting the casserole dishes lined up on the kitchen counter for imminent delivery to the freshly-stricken person’s fridge. Researchers know that having social support like this from others following a heart attack (or any serious health crisis) helps not only with physical recuperation, but also with emotional and psychological recovery, too. Yet virtually all published health research on the important quality-of-life issue of social support so far has been done on men.

White men.

White men, almost all of them seniors.

So lots of old white men studied, but very few women – and very few patients of either gender who were younger than 55 years of age.  But the VIRGO study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association finally attempts to address this gap.(1)  . . .
 Continue reading “Little social support: a big gap for younger heart patients” →